THEURGY 5
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"If the soul rises up to the gods, she becomes god-like and able to know the above and the below; she then obtains the power to heal diseases, to make useful inventions, to institute wise laws. Man has no intuitive power of his own; his intuition is the result of the connection existing between his soul and the Divine Spirit; the stronger this union grows, the greater will be his intuition, spiritual knowledge. Not all the perceptions of the soul are of a divine character; there are also many images which are the products of the lower activity of the soul in her mixture with material elements. Divine Nature, being the eternal fountain of Life, produces no deceptive images; but if her activity is perverted, such deceptive images may appear. If the mind of man is illumined by the Divine Light, the ethereal vehicle of his soul becomes filled with light and shining." -IAMBLICHUS, 333 AD
"Neoplatonism abhorred outwardness, the literalistic and naturalistic fallacies. It sought to see through literal meanings into occult ones, searching for depth in the lost, the hidden, and the buried (texts, words, leftovers from antiquity). It delighted in surprising juxtapositions and reversals of ideas, for it regarded the soul as ever in movement, without definite positions, a borderline concept between spirit and matter. ... [I]t recognized the signal place of imagination in human consciousness, considering this to be the primary activity of the soul. Therefore any psychology that would have soul as its aim must speak imaginatively. It referred frequently to Greek and Roman mythical figures - not as allegories, but as modes of reflection." [Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology 198]
~ooOoo~
Archetypal psychology is rooted in a philosophical and psychological Neoplatonism. To live a fully human life, to become téleos (complete), we need to unify, integrate, and harmonize the conscious and unconscious aspects of our souls. We can maintain truth in spirit to that with which we begin our adventure.
Individuation connects us with the archetypes and their unified root, called the Higher Self, the Highest Soul, the God-image in the individual soul. The inward heaven is universal, whether imagined in psychic or subquantal imagery.
Knowledge of God requires more than a correct concept of what a God is. It requires conjunctions between the ordinary and the divine. The ultimate principle of Absolute Being is unconditioned and beyond limitation and conceptions, “beyond being,” an undetermined vacuum potential in the natural world.
This plenum/void lies at the heart of matter, the interface of psyche and matter that underlies all manifestation. We are initiated through a loving conjunction with the external natural world by participating in the Mystery that is pulsating with life, connecting with inner and outer transformation. Ideas are only made true by events.
We invite psychic forces more fully into our lives to aid spiritual realization. Both philosophy and theurgy include contemplation and action (ascent), conceived of as a spiritual way of living in accordance with the divine patterns and autonomous archetypes to fulfill our telos, endless repetition of the human repertoire, including the death/rebirth cycle. To enter that world is to enter eternity, here and now.
For the late Neoplatonists, theurgy is in fact, performed by the gods themselves (including all traditional liturgies, rites, and sacrifices. They are ordained, revealed as essential if the initiate priest is to attain the divine through the ineffable acts which transcend all intellection (Iamblichus De mysteriis 96.43-14). Iamblichus remarks, “the light of the gods illuminates its subject transcendently” (De myster.31.4).
Theurgy cannot be viewed simply as a ritualistic appendix of Platonism, but rather as its innermost core and its hidden essence. All acts are theurgical which involve the direct assistance of the superior classes (angels, daimons, and semi-mythic teachers) and which activate the self-revelatory illumination in re-ascending from the inferior to the prior, the human prototype.
Theurgy is not about the force of will. We reach out with theurgy, but are transformed by grace. So, a theurgic union with the gods is the accomplishment of the gods themselves acting through their sacramental tokens. The awakened divine symbols by themselves perform their holy work, thereby elevating the initiate to the gods whose ineffable power recognizes by itself its own images.
According to the late Neoplatonists, the gods are present immaterially in the material things, therefore the theurgic seats of elevating power are regarded as receptacles for the invisible divine irradiations involved in the cosmic liturgy of descent and ascent. The body, in its perfect primordial form serves as an image (eikon) of divine self-disclosure, the condition and quality of embodied matter indicate the soul’s internal condition.
http://www.radikaliai.lt/didysis-zaidimas/3235-voices-of-the-fire-ancient-theurgy-and-its-tools
Operative Theurgy
The contents of the Hermetica tend to be deeply varied; its approach to God and creation at times panentheistic (God is the whole cosmos and beyond), monist, at other times dualist (gnostic), polytheistic, pantheistic, and at other times just confusing. The main message of The Hermetica, following Hermes Trismegistus, is toward a direct knowledge and experience of God through gnosis. It still takes the Great Work to turn consciousness states into mature stabilized traits.
It begs the question: what is the nature of the Divine, and is it possible for us to achieve gnosis of that nature? One can practice philosophical theurgy or philosophical polytheism without joining a cult, developing a public occult persona, taking on the full magical lifestyle, Hellenic polytheism, or associating with dark forces or the black arts.
Hermeticism or Hellenism is not an organized movement though it has a theistic aim. It transcends the current prejudices and group think of contemporary paganism/polytheism.
The psychological approach is simply rooted in love of psyche, a devotional polytheism with no dark metaphysical pessimism, compensating theological virtues, or conceptions of faith. It simply recognizes the dynamics of the psyche as an intermediary of the lowest to highest experiences available to mankind.
Proclus believed that a philosopher “should be the hierophant of the whole world in common.” He was a true polytheist, who also honored the goddesses and gods from many pantheons and traditions. Polytheism and its practice of theurgy can promote pluralism, individuality, non-conformity, multiplicity, and an openness to encountering, experiencing, and honoring the divine in many different forms.
Theurgy is a way of transmuting personal into universal experience and life-enriching wisdom, a sanctification through devotion celebrating cycles of renewal and change. Theurgy is a practice that facilitates our circumabulation of psyche, recognizing all other divinities.
We don't have to believe in its ontological reality to use it for self-knowledge. We can simply make the experiments and see for ourselves what creating depth relationships with cosmic principles brings to our lives. Each Hermetic text had an anonymous, eclectic, and spontaneous origin, recognizing the many and the one. A well-informed mature practice can be self-directed and practiced in much the same way as meditation. While a teacher can help one avoid pitfalls, we don't have to to submit to anyone's 'power.'
All the negative cliches are from occult, not psychological or philosophical practice. Theury is magic without spells, though it uses ritualized language and correspondences. Alchemy and astrology are related arts also used as creative practices in archetypal psychology.
Philosophical theury is less about power and will, and more about wisdom and knowledge. It is a Middle Way, a balanced path, not a willful or traditional practice, controlled by a rampant heroic ego or the ideas and influence of others. The whole point is to find our own specific way, and formulate our own means of experience and engagement, without taking it literally.
There is no need to think in Absolute terms, or to strive for ultimate unities. In fact, that runs counter to the spirit of archetypal psychology, and a number of Hermetic commentators. For example, Hillman rejected a metaphysics of of an idealized zealous striving. Winther believed that Jung’s and Swedenborg’s emphasis on achieving the unity (conjunction) of a multifarious self is detrimental.
"After all, it is a form of one-sidedness to be obsessed with a this-worldly self-ideal, always striving after completeness. The self as a complexio oppositorum isn’t the whole truth about the human self. The self is really complementarian" (Mats Winther, 2011b, here).
Curiously, though rooted in Neoplatonism, Archetypal psychology has largely ignored its technology of theurgy, (practices/rituals aimed at uniting with the divine), preferring alchemy and its abstruse symbol language to the direct experiential mode of the traditional magus. Perhaps this is because the notion of 'magic' is controversial and has been co-opted by an eclectic melange of new age practitioners.
Widely embracing such notions brings accusations from 'magical thinking' to 'black magic.' It could be seen as an epistemic rupture with the science fantasy underlying psychology. The implications range from insanity to a selfish appropriation of divine resources, but it is simply a means of raising the ordinary human to the universal. Each movement of theurgy appears to communicate distinct moods and aspects, weaving a quasi-narrative of progress through struggle and darkness toward resolution and light.
Imagine the hapless client who comes for therapy and finds a core of magical practices and Neoplatonic metaphysics at the center of the therapeutic practice. Yet, Archetypal psychology likes to deny any spiritual root and present itself as no method, no metaphysics, and no dogmatic spirituality.
But just because psyche likes to express itself in a certain way, as archetypes, it says nothing about the metaphysical constitution of the world. Its truths are true in the imaginal, in the 'as if' reality. To bring such notions into the ordinary world would be an invasion by the unconscious. We simply seek to become conscious of our diversified nature, our personal complexes, and to transcend their direct and indirect domination over the soul. The psychological goal is to engage and unite the soul, or to make it whole again.
Perhaps one problem, besides skepticism and loathing of esoteric paradigms, is lack of contemporary exemplars who demonstrate the 'proof of the pudding.' It's safer for self and clientele to remain at the plateau of Jungian conventionality with its bullseye target of the Self, with its archetypal ducks all in a row, march through the agility course of persona, shadow, anima/animus, and self. Jung often echoed failed worldviews from history while attempting to unpack, justify, and reconcile his therapeutic and spiritual ideas. That can be part of a sincere search for soul.
Hillman intentionally marginalized what he called Jung's metaphysics (and the notion of the Self), but engaged in a curious denial of his own, even while recognizing its roster of philosophical antecedents.
We don't need to continue that denial, but can boldly experiment with the magical technology without taking it literally or reacting to it religiously as a Christianized, Kabbalistic, or pagan heresy. Kabbalah promotes human participation in the process of divine manifestation and unification of divine attributes. The transcendent aim enhances our theurgical, alchemical and mystical life, but also to bring the Spirit into the matter, to symbolically unite the King with his Queen.
Wolfson makes the important point that “it is necessary to reintegrate the theurgic and mystical elements of the religious experience of the kabbalist," too. Dr. Israel Regardie suggested that western esoteric tradition dispensed with the religious and metaphysical aspects of kabbala leaving a simple philosophical system based on the glyph of the Tree of Life as the framework of practical magic for direct experience. Other theurgic mystical paths are the deity work of Vajrayana Buddhism and the 'body of light' tradition in Sufism.
Neoplatonic theurgy traces back to its roots in Ancient Egypt. The ancient philosophy, in its original Orphico-Pythagorean and Platonic form, is a way of life in accordance with the divine. It is also the way of alchemical transformation and mystical illumination achieved through initiatic ‘death’ and subsequent restoration at the level of divine light.
Philosophy restores the soul’s wings and leads the purified lover of wisdom to Heaven. As a means of spiritual reintegration and unification, ancient philosophy is inseparable from the hieratic rites. The Platonic tradition of philosophy ultimately derives from the Egyptian and Mesopotamian temple liturgies and rituals, reinterpreted and revived by the Neoplatonists under the name of ‘theurgy’ in late antiquity. (Algis Uzdavinys, Philosophy and Theurgy in Late Antiquity)
The Neoplatonic world view has moved closer to psyche by giving experience and observation priority over philosophical, metaphysical, or epistemological theory. What the Neoplatonists demonstrated was a willingness to at least make the experiment for themselves, without assuming magical practice was a reviled ticket to eternal damnation. Rather, as a way of realization, it instantiates a return to our psychic and spiritual roots.
A Participatory Approach
Theurgy offers us a participatory understanding of creation, engaging soul through the minds of the gods with sacred ceremonials. For theurgist, the magical energy that they use comes directly through the deity that they are focusing upon. Acknowledging many gods simply recognizes the irreducibility of religious pluralism. Growing always takes experimentation, risk, and willingness to change and transform -- the core of archetypal freedom.
Participatory thinking doesn't have to trap us in relativistic dilemmas. We can simply remain open to the potential heuristic value and validity of alternative epistemic frameworks, archetypal principles, and embodied spiritual potentials and transformative energies. We recognize the imagination as an epistemic bridge between embodied experience and mental conceptualization.
Sure, we can also retain recognition of the value of fragmentation, dissolving, breakdown, and descent -- but in our self-directed practice, we don't have to be limited to that. Isn't this the basis of the royal marriage of soul and spirit, embracing the whole cycle of human potential?
We need to move beyond the strictures of outmoded postmodern dialectics and deconstruction to define our reality. This is the realm of noetic states that emerge through meditative, visionary, ecstatic, and contemplative practice. It includes the centrality of the body in spiritual and practice and experience, the role of empathy, the erotic, and emotion in spiritual knowledge, and the connection between the sexual and mystical.
Perhaps, these are some of the reasons that Jungian and post-Jungian practice has lost traction in the general public and in the psychological and spiritual supermarkets. But this has been largely due to inability to compete against psychiatric drugs and the monopolization of treatment by object-relations, ego-psychology, and quick-fix brief therapy that treats problems not people.
All that is spiritual is not developmental, heroic, or escapist. Transpersonal therapies are more open to embracing spiritual technologies for integration, but theurgy has not made inroads there, either, through oversight or whatever reasons. They speak of theurgy bluntly as the use of magic to achieve spiritual salvation. Theurgy remains the less appreciated 'road not taken,' except perhaps by those powerless to resist its call.
The failure of anti-depressants and other psychoactive treatment have led to studies showing that talk therapy remains just as effective, but more difficult to bill. It is time to implement and experiment with the core practices that underlie this philosophy of treatment, whether in the consulting room or in self-directed pursuit of self-knowledge.
Yes, it is complex, symphonic, and elegant, but it is also engaging and perhaps more fulfilling. We don't need to fear the complexity that is inherent in learning any artform at a masterful level. Would you deny your God a mere 10,000 hours of joyful practice?
That impulse is at the root of Theurgy as a Way of Return, through which we realize that the other world already exists in this world. It is a means to share or participate in the creative energies of the gods by constructing and consecrating their material receptacles. Theophany was resonance between the individual and god through the holy work, an emergent theosophy. Eternity is eternal presence.
Natural magic recognizes the creative power of the imagination and the value of caring for the soul by creating sacred space and time for such epiphanies. Individuation is a natural developmental process which can progress unaided to its natural end (Jacobi), as we see in those who have grown into wisdom and spiritual authority.
The Neoplatonic invocation of pagan deities was for the purpose of attaining unity with them. This unitive state is identical with von Franz’s alchemical goal of the union of the total person with the unus mundus.” The soul is our shared living presence -- that radiance we share with the divine, one infinite, all-embracing presence that infuses us all with life and vitality.
The concept of an underlying unified reality from which everything emerges and to which everything returns is also the energetic principle, the world-soul, unified psychophysical reality. Jung's archetypes are psychophysical patterns that reside in this transcendental layer of the universe.
Theurgy is an ancient philosophical spiritual practice, rooted in shamanism. Ancient Egyptian hieratic rites deal with spiritual alchemy including gnostic paideia as well as in transformation, elevation, and immortalization of the soul of the true philosopher or the initiate.
The Greek term theourgia may be some now forgotten Egyptian, Akkadian, or Aramaic term related to the complicated vocabulary of temple rites, festivals, and hermeneutical performances. Hermeneutics is the study of theories and methods of the interpretation of systems of meaning, including interpretations of experience, or human behavior generally, including language and patterns of speech, social institutions, and ritual behaviors.
Theurgists follow the paradigms of cosmogony and serve as vehicles of ascent conducted by the divine powers themselves. Accordingly, it would be incorrect to think that the Chaldean Platonists of Roman Syria, those who allegedly created and promoted this term, theourgia, also invented the thing itself, that is, the tradition of hieratic arts and of their secret, theurgical understanding.
Neoplatonic theurgy attracted deities with whom the theurgist could connect and be transformed. Given that Neoplatonism was a philosophical system, these deities did not need to be assimilated with the gods of mythology. They personified the symbolic ontology of primordial forces.
Theurgy includes the practice of rituals, sometimes seen as magical in nature. The magus emulates the creative forces of the Primordial Presence, but more than emulation, he or she participates in a continuous creation with moments of eternity breaking through. Paradoxically, the highest heaven equates with the deepest stratum of the unconscious, or unus mundus, our natural abode beyond time and space.
The theurgists invoke the action or evoke the presence of one or more gods, with the goal of a unitive experience. "...enlightened with the knowledge of visions, being both consecrated and consecrators of mystical understanding, we shall become luminous and theurgic, perfected and able to bestow perfection." (Dionysius EH372B)
The elementary universe is as much psychic as physical, as much consciousness as informed matter. Theurgy is the Art of raising the human soul to its own divinity through ritualistic practices which bring that soul into harmony with the divinity and diversity of the World Soul. These practices transcend the rational mind, and partake of the deeper Mind pervading the natural world.
Initiation begins the process, whether it is natural individuation, traditional, or self-initiation. Initiation magic is any act that sets these transformative forces in motion. We choose to commit to an arduous self-directed symbolic process.
Ritual evocation of the secret divine names was important because language is a foundational means of ascent to the divine. For example, in ancient Egyptian ritual, speech not only makes the archetypal realm of noetic realities manifest in visible symbolic tokens and actions, but also performatively accomplishes theurgical transition and transposition of the cultic events into the divine realm, thereby establishing relationship between the domain of noetic Forms and series of manifestation. In this hieratic context, the term akhu means “radiant power”, “noetic light”, “solar intelligence”, and is closely related with the conception of eidetic and demiurgic name (ran, or ren). Instead of supplying definitions, Egyptians would state names, that is, the sacred and secret names of things and actions that the priests had to know to exercise the radiant power of the words” http://www.radikaliai.lt/didysis-zaidimas/3235-voices-of-the-fire-ancient-theurgy-and-its-tools
Initiation into magic is self-dedication -- the moment when we make an explicit commitment to fulfill two obligations: 1) to realize to the utmost our individual potential, and
2) to serve other people with everything we have.
These two themes express the Great Work. They are often one in the same thing. That meaning unfolds slowly like individuation. The visionary grace is experiential contact with the archetypal gods in a spiritual dimension through a mystical theology. The theurgist can only prepare to accept the divine operation of symbols. We encounter these entities as real. They appear as distinctly other, like the presences we meet in dreams.
Such visionary experience was called a daimon by the poet Yeats, and an angel by Henri Corbin. The archetypal image emerges from the anima mundi, as a theophanic manifestation mediating between the sensible and the intelligible world. Theurgy is a bridge through which higher beings reveal themselves. It's a truism that the gods never appear alone. The theurgist takes on the shape of the gods, connecting spiritual and physical world.
Enactment & Engagement
Theurgists themselves are of the archetype Mystic or Saint. For them "philosophy was conceived as a sacred rite" and Plato a hierophant that revealed the world as theophany. Plotinus, once valorized as a “rational mystic,” practiced visualizations with all the features of a theurgic rite. His reason become an organ of theophany or cosmogony.
The Platonists of late antiquity believed that Plato was "divine and Apollonian." They recognized divine power throughout all of nature. The supernatural was not elsewhere but here, in nature. Gods were everywhere: in plants, in rocks, in animals, in temples and in us.
Theurgic images (godforms) can be incredibly elegant and complex depending on the aesthetics and ritual spaces available. Thee more corresponding elements employed in the archetypal field, the clearer the atmosphere of that form. Ideally, nothing in the field gives a dissonant signal because it doesn't fit.
We invite the figures, let the dialogue take its course, focus on ethics, and consciously perform the symbolic behavior. Focusing on personal meaning, its intrinsic value arises from the experience itself. The symbols themselves are healing and promote integration. Theurgists not only believed in God, but knew Him through their knowledge of His attributes as they exist in the Astral Light, or, as the old world Kabbalists called it, the Matrix of the World.
Theurgy demands commitment, preparation, and focused Intention. The rituals of Theurgy are accomplished through ritualistic prayers, which result in focusing the mind with symbols or archetypes that represent thoughts, qualities, virtues. One of the powers of theurgy is the ability to select our archetypes based on the situation.
What Jung called individuation, the Neoplatonists called henôsis, known only through a theurgical processes of Union. In Neoplatonism, the Inexpressible One is the ultimate principle of unity beyond all duality, beyond conceptualization, beyond Existence and Non-existence, beyond even Being and Non-being.
Individual Gods are understood as expressions of this ineffable Unity, as Beings radiating from The One, unified by Sameness and distinguished by Diversity. Neoplatonism recognizes the procession of The One into Multiplicity and Matter, and their return to The One in an eternal (timeless) cycle, often symbolized by the Ouroboros serpent. In the sacred myth, the Child's return, reborn, restarts the story, the essence of the Ouroboros cycle.
Both individuation and Neoplatonism, which fused Plato with other mystical traditions, suggest waiting until one is well-established after midlife to begin such practice. We learn to see with imaginal eyes the panoply of available images of the anima mundi, world soul and world mind. Often divination helps us discover something about the past that illuminates the present.
An expansion of consciousness includes unconscious contents so far as possible. First they are discriminated, then integrated. This integrative process brings one into contact with the unconscious archetypal forces that regulate all human lives, that is, to encounter the gods and goddesses. These eternal forms are as important to us as to our ancestors.
We learn to use their power to experience the intense awareness and recognition of a state of emotions symbolized in an imaginal pattern, natural principles, or universal prototype. Three shared phases include purification (soul/discursive mind), illumination, and unification. The gods can be consulted by oracles, but it works best if we are in a quandry and remain open to the question of interpretations.
Religion, philosophy, and theurgy were all ancient ways of life to learn how to live better, including practice using prayers, offerings, sacrifice, if not dogma and belief. What is important is to honor the gods not what you believe about them. Hence, it remains a Mystery.
The mutual goal of Jung's active imagination and theurgy is to live in partnership with the unconscious, self-discovery, and integration of the individual psyche. Communication is through the language of symbols and interaction with archetypes and complexes. When we invoke gods and daimons through symbols, they respond in symbols.
We complete the circuit between heaven and earth. We learn to see with the eyes of the soul. Jung stressed that it is mysterious and paradoxical, because it unifies all opposites, transcending being and not-being. It is beyond discursive reason and can be approached or grasped only by means of metaphors and symbols.
To speak of a world ensouled is to recall the Platonism and Neoplatonism. The Neoplatonists describe the fundamental nature of reality and allow us to peer into the reality construction process that separates us from our Source. The Renaissance Neoplatonists imagined the universe as a fountain with the flow of the soul of the universe running through all things of the world and then circling back to the ultimate source.
"In the Plotinian view, the soul at its highest in the Intellectual-Principle "has a nature lending itself to divisional existence" and is "attached to the Supreme and yet reaches down to this sphere." It partakes of the nature of both the infinite and finite-the unified and eternal and the multiple and ephemeral. But it "is parted without partibility" because no matter how fully it seems to divide itself among the transient multiplicities, its eternal unity is never sundered. I'll say more below about how the soul can appear to fragment and yet never lose "the vision inherent to that superior phase." (Mansfield)
Psycho-Physical Reality
According to James Hillman, archetypal psychology is rooted in the Neoplatonic tradition of Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus. Proclus describes the cosmos as the holiest of shrines, suggesting, “[Plato] speaks of the cosmos as an agalma (shrine) of the everlasting gods because it is filled with the divinity of the intelligible gods."
Proclus conceived of theurgy as a ritual method of recreating the characteristics of a god and tool of spiritual development. He systematized Plato's doctrines of recollection to include the soul's universal concepts and innate knowledge to bring them to conscious recognition.
Hillman argues that the rediscovery of soul and its paradoxical nature enabled the Renaissance. While psyche is in us, we are also in it. This ancient philosophy was a system of practices constituting a way of life and essentially a sacramental mystery rite -- a philosophy now seen as a prototype of Analytical and Archetypal psychology.
All things are one and the pleroma of being is indestructible. Divine powers knit together the energies of the sun, planets and stars, and they operate on all bodies, animate or inanimate. This is the notion of cosmic sympathy. This doctrine of sympathy applies to man in both body and spirit, in the magico-religious worldview of The Magus.
Hillman credits Plato's “Myth of Er” as his own source of understanding the notion of the daimon. The personal daimon is always grounded in the impersonal and unknowable depths of the psyche, but is also a manifestation of the Anima Mundi, or Soul of the World, the imaginal world -- Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino's concept of Anima Mundi.
Mythic persons and archetypal events influence the psyche by conditioning perceptions, generating meanings, and shaping our lives. Our journey is a deepening, a 'seeing through', as James Hillman expresses it.
The three basic principles of Plotinus' metaphysics are called by him ‘the One’ (or, equivalently, ‘the Good’), Intellect, and Soul. Plotinus believed in one universal soul, which correlates with the Anima Mundi. The objective psyche is the imaginal world of the soul where psyche is as real as the physical world. The Neoplatonists also referred to an imaginal body, theochema, that carried you like a vehicle, or subtle body.
Hillman's theory is phenomenological Neoplatonism which means that only what we see should be regarded real, i.e., only what is apparent to consciousness is existent. Connections between our life and soul embody our soul-making process. Beauty has been defined by the neoplatonists as invisible presence in visible form and a divine enhancement of earthly things. According to Hillman, beauty is food for the soul.
Everything is personified and speaks through the masks of image and symbol, a matrix, field, or infinity of metaphor. 'Truth' is a semiotic fiction, ultimate rooted in fundamental Uncertainty, making the boundary between real and illusory fuzzy, a Cloud of Unknowing. It is more pursuit of the truth that is important than any particular truth.
The central question, “What is the nature of psychic reality?” can only be answered by direct experience. We can enter this Renaissance world of angels, daimons, gods and goddeses, aesthetics, personification, divination, poetics, and spiritual abstraction in our philosophical inquiry to rejuvenate our own souls.
An information transduction process occurs in our lives when we translate ideas into action or live what we aspire to. We can manipulate our reality and harness our energies, through concentration on purpose. Through this means we have the ability to change our desires into a new reality through skill, preparation, effort, persistence, commitment and integrity. We need to be aware where we are focusing our energy; what our objectives are; how we are communicating with others, and what we want others to see and believe.
We need to let Spirit guide that process of unfolding potential. The Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus was full of this metaphysical spiritual power. He is the godfather of all the Hermetic Arts, the mystic arts and occult powers, as well as science. He has power over language, writing, and signs like his predecessor, the Egyptian god, Thoth.
The Hermetica included works on magic, alchemy, astrology, healing, gnosis, theurgy, ritual and philosophy. These texts were based on notions of sympathetic magic, that like substances sharing an essence could influence one another through resonance effects. Likewise the hypnotic and magnetic qualities of charismatic individuals can create rapport with others to influence them.
Renaissance theurgy was described by Ficino as the translator of Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, the Hermetica, the Orphica, and especially Iamblichus and his largest surviving text, “On the Mysteries.” But Pico changed the character of western theurgy and esotericism by introducing the Jewish Kabbalah. Agrippa matured his predecessors’ work into a encyclopedic system, to which the physician Paracelsus wed alchemy while founding modern medicine. Bruno burned for dreaming of a bigger restored Pagan world.
Jung's is a more aspirational spiritual psychology (height), whereas Hillman prioritizes polyphonic psyche and soul-making (depth), including darkness and descent. Multiplicity of consciousness shows in the dissociability of the psyche into many complexes.
Renaissance Neoplatonists also evoked ancient thinkers in their personified images. The great men of the past were living realities to them because they personified the soul's needs for spiritual ancestors, ideal types, internal guides and mentors who can share our lives with us and inspire us beyond. We can also invoke the inspiration of our philosophical ancestors in Depth Psychology.
Jung related archetypes, unconscious potentials for psychical activity, with Platonic Ideas. These archetypal ideas or forms define the transpersonal structure of mind and correspond to phenomenological investigations of the Neoplatonists and of Jung. The deepest parallels or correlates arise because both conducted phenomenological experiments in the structure of the psyche, using techniques with similar effects that map onto one another.
Theurgy is an arcane tradition. Activating archetypes and complexes, theurgy invites or invokes, calls up or calls in the gods and daimôns, in much the same way that divination invites synchronicities. Theurgy, consciously performed symbolic behavior, is an often-overlooked multidiscipinary creative and expressive artform that meets and invites the grace of the transcendent function.
Modern theurgy is a valuable psychological soul process. Service means an imagination of caring for soul. Invocation is divine union. For the theurgist, the imaginal opens an epiphanic space, arousing images from suspension in a visionary apperception of reality with their own goals, techniques and outcomes. More than artistic or poetic, true theophanic vision is a wellspring of esoteric meaning.
In a pamplet W.B. Yeats wrote for the Golden Dawn in 1902, he contends that, "The central principle of all the Magic of power is that everything we formulate in the
imagination, if we formulate it strongly enough, realizes itself in the circumstances of life, acting either through our own souls, or through the spirits of nature."
Psychoid
Psychoid means the transcendental and psychophysical aspect of the archetype that describe the archetypal structures and behavior of organic and inorganic matter. Both inside and outside, psychical and physical are rooted in archetypal numbers and complex dynamics, for example as shown in Pythagorean theory and the 10 spheres of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life with its extensive lists of archetypal correspondences and correlations. The soul guide initiates the transformation process.
How can the demands of the archetypes (our genetically and neurologically encoded paleolithic gods) be satisfied in the context of modern life? This is one purpose of both Jungian techniques (such as Active Imagination) and Neoplatonic theurgy (and similar spiritual practices), which facilitate negotiation between the conscious ego and the unconscious.
Invocation conjures the image of the theurgist as primordial man in the imaginal realm of the breath and human speech expressing the creative power of the divine. The theurgist participates in the continual creation of the divine -- all things are manifestations of the breath of God. Breath speaks itself as a microcosm of the cosmic macrocosm.
Theurgy is a valuable technique for evoking and invoking the gods, which is rarely used in Jungian work, though praised in Neoplatonism. It should be added to the typical dreamwork, alchemy, and active imagination as an interdisciplinary means of connecting and relating to archai or paleo-gods.
The theurgist is in a conscious archetypal relation with the divinity, and the image becomes a medium for interaction, that is, for exploring specific archetypes and complexes residing in the unconscious. In Magick, we transcend the limits of ordinary consciousness and commune with various forms of divine consciousness.
The identification with a given energy is accomplished by a three-fold ritual. 1). Separation from the profane or ordinary state of consciousness. Dissolution of the ordinary state of consciousness. 2). The transition stage, or twilight zone which lies between. Creative or chaotic consciousness. 3). The new order or perception of reality which occurs in the sacred time of the soul.
Identification with an enhanced sense of self, greater well-being. Hermes is the lord of boundaries, or doorways, the threshold or liminal area. The inbetween, or twilight zone, in enables a state of receptivity to become established. It allows an emptying process, a letting go.
Ritual acts reawaken deep layers of the psyche. This brings the mythological or archetypal ideas back to memory. Though the basic, or original forms of Magick and schizophrenic fantasy (wish fulfillment) spring from the same roots, they are not synonymous. Magick is, in general, the transition from passivity to activity. The Will is essential.
Realistic action does not follow schizophrenic magic or magical thinking. The fantasy is a substitute for action. In lower forms of magic, practiced for personal gain or ego gratification or power, the ego is either weak or absent, or over-inflated. In ceremonial Magick there is a conscious effort directed at self-transformation, by harmonizing conscious and unconscious cycles or rhythms.
Sacred Rites
Theurgy doesn't need to imply literal worship, except through attention, nor is natural magic an artifact strictly of the overweening heroic ego. It does not even have to be aspirational or developmental, as much as a relational ritual tradition.
Stimulating right brain activity with creative engagement produces revelation, feelings of conviction and discovery, numinosity, and mystery, opening worlds of becoming and being. The theurgist is in a conscious archetypal relation with the divinity, and the image becomes a medium for interaction, that is, for exploring specific archetypes and complexes residing in the unconscious.
Hermeticism was not embodied in a single religious group, but instead was a philosophical system that is at the root of many traditions, some of which remain robust. Among the original esoteric texts, The Hermetica included works on magic, alchemy, astrology, healing, gnosis, theurgy, ritual and philosophy. Sympathetic magic contends that like substances sharing an essence can influence one another through resonance.
Hermetics is a Spiritual Technology. This natural means of self-initiation demands self-honesty, self-responsibility and an overarching desire to live life as a spiritual path. Generic symbolic languages such as esoterics, alchemy, and Qabalah help articulate the phenomenology of inner experience.
Hermeticism is a blend of ancient Egyptian religion, philosophy, science and natural magic, with elements of Greek Paganism, Alexandrian Judaism, ancient Sumerian religion and Chaldaean astrology/astronomy, and Zoroastrianism. It is associated with the philosophical schools of Platonism, Neo-Platonism, Stoicism and Pythagorianism.
Unlike Plotinus who broke from Platonic tradition and asserted an undescended soul, Iamblichus re-affirmed the soul's embodiment in matter believing matter to be as divine as the rest of the cosmos. He contended that that "the entire body of the cosmos is ruled by the World Soul..." and that macro/micro dynamics [as above; so below], requires that our vehicles both reveal and veil our essences. Marie-Louise von Franz (1974, 7) says, “The
lowest collective level of our psyche is simply pure nature.”
Iamblichus insisted on a special position for the human soul. It is separate from nous and the other higher souls, and holds an intermediate position between them and nature below. Hermetic rebirth and immortalization of the soul is realized as giving birth, not escaping from the world but creating it. Without the physical body it would not be rebirth.
Natural Philosophy & Natural Magic
To read hermetic rebirth as an escape from the material world is to miss the demiurgic dimension of the soul’s immortalization; this is certainly important for theurgists and Hermetists as well. He thought the goal of theurgy is insight and to “establish the universal soul in the demiurgic god in his entirety, distinguishing the universal soul from the particular soul.
One’s physical body is no longer a prison but becomes the nexus through which divinity is hermetically revealed and concealed. The initiate then exists in a particular mortal body but at the same time, as Hermes reports, “I went out of myself into an immortal body ...that is co-extensive with the cosmos." Hermetic rebirth means the initiate is reborn by giving birth to the world from the mystery of original silence. The way of Hermes is the way of immortality concealed and revealed in our mortal existence.
For the later Platonists, divinity is not a state; it is as an activity, an energy. Theurgy is demiurgy, world-generation via the ordering of pre-existent matter. Theurgy is "god work" that enables the embodied person to participate and communicate with divine energies. Archetypes are empirical, stable, and public sources of transcendent meaning, giving rise to archetypally meaningful situations or relationships that are numinous (hallowed, miraculous, uncanny, supernatural).
For example, in ancient Egyptian ritual, speech makes the archetypal realm of noetic realities manifest in the liturgical realm of visible symbolic tokens and actions. It also performatively accomplishes theurgical transition and transposition of the cultic events into the divine realm, thereby establishing relationship.
Theurgy is an archetypal process of mythic renewal. Theurgy is concerned with the work of spiritual regeneration, an ancient discipline, revered and nurtured throughout history by those few who know it, yet, barely acknowledged or understood by most.
The theurgist is in a conscious archetypal relation with the divinity, with the image as a medium for interaction. A convergence of related symbols activates an archetype or complex and invites projection of the corresponding god or daimon onto the image. The symbols tune the image animating it to become a vehicle to facilitate communication.
Exploring specific archetypes and complexes residing in the unconscious, the
theurgist is in a conscious archetypal relation with the divinity, and the image becomes a medium for interaction, that is, for exploring specific archetypes and complexes residing in the unconscious. initiates participate in this and actualizes it in themselves -- the archetype manifests in them. Hillman comments that “we become precisely the activity we enact, the memory we remember; man is many, Proteus, flowing everywhere as the universal soul and potentially all things” (Hillman, Loose Ends, 1978, p.151).
Theurgical practices facilitate individuation by enabling an accommodation and assimilation between our conscious minds and the personal and collective unconscious. This process advances from the daimons of the personal unconscious, to the archetypal gods of the collective unconscious, toward their root and source, the archetypal Self, the God-image, The Unspeakable One.
This contact is accomplished by means of symbolism, the discursively inexpressible and logically unconnected. Jung calls the symbol-making faculty of the mind the
transcendent function . In theurgy a symbol is something in the seira (the lineage) of a god,
whether it is an animal, plant, or stone, a mineral or a myth, a hymn or poem, a
drawn character or even a number.
A symbol is an inherent component of an archetype or complex, which can activate the archetype or complex, or by which the archetype or complex manifests in consciousness. A symbol serves both to invoke a god or daimon and to signal the arrival of a paleo-god or daimon.
Some symbols are inherent in the phylogenetic structure of an archetype and
are therefore universal, common to all humankind. Other symbols are in the
personal associative network that constitutes a complex or sub-personality arising
from the archetype. These symbols may be personal, cultural, or common to some
other group. In effect they invoke or signify a specific daimon (complex) that is engendered by a generic god, but associated with the individual or group.
Iamblichus understood the soul’s divinization as non-dual: "The benevolent and gracious gods shine their light generously on theurgists, calling their souls up to themselves, giving them unification, and accustoming them, while they are still in their bodies, to be detached from their bodies and turned to their eternal and noetic principle."
http://www.esotericarchives.com/oracle/iambl_th.htm
https://www.princeton.edu/~hellenic/Hermeneutica/ShawPaper.pdf
https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~mclennan/papers/EvolutionJungTheurgyUPS.pdf
http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~mclennan/papers/MacLennan-ISNS-2012.pdf
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/658b/e80b1da95ecdf3245a6e00229244507f2906.pdf
https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~mclennan/papers/MacLennan%20ISNS%202014%20rev.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242238106_Individual_Soul_and_World_Soul_The_Process_of_Individuation_in_Neoplatonism_Jung
https://books.google.com/books?id=LxBg-ldSBUkC&pg=PA185&lpg=PA185&dq=,transpersonal+psychology,+theurgy&source=bl&ots=bMWgHwWBBl&sig=nNBXQwTM6dhUUKHl66Pwt7APV7A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBtvGGqdvaAhVQs1kKHSBfDLkQ6AEIcjAI#v=onepage&q=%2Ctranspersonal%20psychology%2C%20theurgy&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=tTuJK1aovJEC&pg=PA108&lpg=PA108&dq=,theurgy,+paleo-gods&source=bl&ots=EUetxd94Hk&sig=NOfYQ9Cawc95kGd_mho3KIzq0yA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwih45TcmNbaAhUJ3VMKHXIZAF04ChDoAQgtMAE#v=onepage&q=%2Ctheurgy%2C%20paleo-gods&f=false
Corbin’s mundus imaginalis was also called mundus archetypus, a concrete
spiritual world of archetypal figures,60 apparitional forms and angels, an
epiphanic space where the images of the archetypal world lie suspended--
Corbin used the expression “images in suspension”.61 Visionary
apperception of reality, and therefore true theophanic vision, was granted
by a spiritual faculty called active imagination, an intermediate power
which could produce symbols (archetypal figures could be intended as
symbols too).
C. G. Jung, Tibetan Tantra, and the Great... (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305209675_C_G_Jung_Tibetan_Tantra_and_the_Great_Goddess_An_Exploration_of_Sacred_Entities_and_Archetypes [accessed Apr 26 2018].
http://www.radikaliai.lt/didysis-zaidimas/3235-voices-of-the-fire-ancient-theurgy-and-its-tools
For Plotinus the order of reality consists of three primary1, vertically graded realms or hypostases: the One (to hen) or Good (to agathon), Intellect (nous) and World-Soul (psuche). Plotinus says that the three hypostases endure within the human microcosm as well as in the universe of the macrocosm. The One/Good is the first2 cause, primal existent, source and goal of all things3 and the central axis upon which Plotinus' overall worldview revolves around4. The One is a God-beyond-God, transcending all predications of being, number5, essence6, existence7, name8, form, attribute, thought and limitation; a complete and absolute self-contained unity-in-itself. It is the Supreme Reality and Being-beyond-being (metaousia). The One is identified as such so as to deny all multiplicity of it9.
From the One proceeds a second principle, the Intellect (nous), which, as the Divine Mind, functions as the efficient cause of all things. Nous is the Intelligible universe holding the Ideal Forms (eidos) or perfect archetypes of every existent within itself and as such is the realm of Being (ousia)10. Therefore, it would be more correct to call the Intellect Theos (or God) rather than the One. Intellect begets the World-Soul which in turn engenders nature (phusis) and the material cosmos. At the furtherest end of this reality is privational Matter (hyle) - absolute negation and source of evil.
The procession of hypostases from the One to the World-Soul is one of necessary emanation. The One is superabundant source and it overflows and emanates Intellect without in anyway diminishing11. Intellect contemplates its Source, overflows and emanates its offspring, the World-Soul,
Towards the paternal Harbour
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Robert van den Berg
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Julianus (the Theurgist.), Ruth Dorothy Majercik - Philosophy - 1989
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Pseudo-Dionysius and Theurgy
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Journal of Early Christian Studies - Volume 7, Number 4, Winter 1999, pp. 573-599
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Antiquity) by: Sarah Klitenic Wear and John Dillon
Coughlin, Rebecca. “Theurgy, Prayer, Participation, and Divinization in Dionysius the Areopagite.”
Dionysius 24 (2006): 149-174.
Burns 'Proclus and the Theurgic liturgy of Dionysius', Dionysius 22 (2004), 111–132.
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by: Hotz, Kendra G., Ph.D.
Carine Van Liefferinge, La Théurgie des Oracles Chaldaïques à Proclus. Kernos Supplément 9. Liège: Centre International d'Étude de la Religion Grecque Antique, 199. Pp. 319. ISBN (ISSN) 0776-3824. EUR 40.00. reviewed here http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2003/2003-07-40.html
Theurgy in Kabbalah
Kabbalah: New Perspectives by Moshe Idel
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the works of Johannes Reuchlin
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by Jan N. Bremmer, Jan R. Veenstra - 2002
Wolfson, Elliot R
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Wolfson, Elliot R
"Language, Secrecy, and the Mysteries of Law: Theurgy and the Christian Kabbalah of Johannes Reuchlin,"
Kabbalah: A Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 13 (2005): 7-41.
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EGYPTIAN MAGIC RELATING TO LATER CLASSICAL THEURGY
Boylan, Patrick, Thoth: The Hermes of Egypt, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, 1922 (Laysthe groundwork for the later “thrice-great” Thoth who becomes Hermes Trismegistus.Dieleman, Jacco, Priests, Tongues, and Rites: The London-Leiden Magical Manuscripts andTranslations in Egyptian Ritual, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 2005Ritner, Robert Kriech, The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice, The OrientalInstitute of the University of Chicago,
